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Truth in government

by Simon Longstaff

Within hours of Australia's Federal Election campaign being called, the Prime Minister, Mr Howard and the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Latham, had both signalled that 'trust in (and of) government' would be a major issue during the campaign. However, each leader highlighted a different version of the concept of ‘trust’.

For example, Mr Howard placed particular emphasis on the idea of trust as 'reliability' and ‘competence’. This allowed him to argue that the Coalition parties, under his leadership, could better be trusted to run the economy than, say, the Labor Party under Latham.

Mr Latham appeared to champion the idea of 'trust' as a reflection of honesty and integrity. Under Mr Latham's framework, it is not enough to say that the job will get done. Rather, the Labor Leader asks people to consider issues of character as well as conduct.

Of course, neither individual is denying the importance of elements highlighted by their political opponents. Needless to say, Messrs Howard and Latham believe themselves to be equally reliable, competent and honest. 'Being what they say they are' and 'doing what they say will do' would be invoked by each as the hallmark of integrity and the basis for building and retaining the electorate's trust.

The trouble is that the electorate seems to be similarly divided in its understanding of the foundations of trust in politics and politicians. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many people simply assume that politicians will lie when it is in their interests to do so - in short, that they can be relied upon ... to be "economical with the truth".

In most cases, the assumptions about politicians on which popular judgements are based are exactly that: mere assumptions. Few people are close enough to politicians and the political process to reach a truly informed view. Yet, politicians allow this prevailing judgement to stand, doing relatively little to challenge the unflattering stereotypes.

Perhaps politicians think that there is little that they can do directly to address perceptions that they are untrustworthy (when it comes to their truthfulness). After all, the public's view of politics is, at best, selective and partial - filtered through the eyes of a professionally sceptical media. Or perhaps the reality of politics is such that closer inspection would reveal a world of constant tradeoffs - in which truthfulness has to be balanced against effectiveness and a host of other competing demands. Perhaps public cynicism is the best that can be hoped for given the messy reality of politics with all of its ethical complexity and ambiguity.

Given the results of the small and informal Truth in Government survey conducted by St James Ethics Centre, it would seem that Australians do, in fact, have a reasonable grasp of some of the difficulties faced by their elected representatives. As the results show, a significant minority of the respondents accept that there may be times when concerns about national security outweigh an unmediated commitment to the truth.

For example, I think that people would recognise that an enemy, in times of war, may be misled using techniques that involve the deliberate deception of one's own people. That said, the respondents to the survey are clearly of the view that politicians may lie only under the most extreme circumstances.

The strength of opinion shown by respondents may be little more than a statement of the obvious. However, it could be something more - a recognition that the proper functioning of a liberal democracy ultimately depends on the quality of the consent given by the governed at election time. The least we might reasonably expect is that our consent to be governed be informed. In turn, this depends on the quality of information made available to the community by its elected representatives.

Understood in these terms, it is not just the bald lie that should be challenged as undemocratic. The same can be said of equivocation, dissembling, the use of 'weasel words' - indeed anything that obscures the truth of what is being proposed. All such practices undermine the quality of (indeed the possibility of) a flourishing democracy.

View our Truth in Government survey results.

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